The Hampton Roads Partnership is a public-private nonprofit organization formed on May 15, 1996. The Partnership represents ten cities, six counties, and one town in Southeastern Virginia, equaling nearly 1.6 million citizens.

The Hampton Roads Partnership is comprised of the chief elected official of all seventeen communities as well as community leaders from the private business sector, education, military, and labor from both south Hampton Roads and the Virginia Peninsula. The Partnership is the only organization in Hampton Roads that focuses on the region's strategic issues for the purpose of enhancing our competitiveness in a dynamic global economy with resulting income and job growth for our citizens.

The Partnership facilitates regional collaboration and action resulting in a better quality of life for all of the regionâ€™s citizens.

The Partnership is governed by an Executive Committee, which meets monthly, and a Board of Directors, which meets quarterly. The Partnership has a permanent staff of five.

Nearly eighty percent of the Partnership's operating funds come from annual investments made by member businesses and educational institutions while the remaining percentage comes from investments made by the localities comprising the Hampton Roads region.

In today’s highly competitive and rapidly changing global economy, traditional political boundaries are irrelevant. The boundaries that matter, for work and for play, are those of commerce, and they are drawn around metropolitan regions, not localities.

Regions that will prosper are those that find ways to become more agile and efficient - providing their economies with cost effective and supporting infrastructure - within these economic boundaries. In the absence of region-wide mechanisms for the provision of these essentials, cooperation among localities in a region is imperative.